Dark Star (23 page)

Pinback leaned over Doolittle's station, saw that one of the suit channels had indeed been shut down. He flipped the switch back up.

"Yeah, it was off, all right. Go get him, Lieutenant."

"On my way."

Boiler noticed the expression on Pinback's face. "Hey, what's wrong now?"

"It's Talby. The jerk was working in the airlock when it opened and he didn't have a jet pack on. He's drifting away from the ship. Doolittle's going after him."

"Pretty stupid . . . blowing him out the airlock like that."

Pinback started to say something, thought better of it. It wouldn't do any good.

Doolittle would get Talby back safely and maybe, he thought tightly, they'd both have the decency not to mention the incident again. Boiler would never let Pinback forget that it had been he who had blown the astronomer out of the ship—even though it had been Doolittle's fault for turning off Talby's suit channel.

Doolittle should have known Talby was in the airlock and warned them forward. It wasn't fair, damn it. It just wasn't fair that he should get blamed for Doolittle's mistakes. And after he'd just saved them all by restraining Boiler from shooting at the bomb.

He activated the local-space tracker and soon had two tiny blips on the screen—Doolittle and Talby. Talby was already a good distance away, but Doolittle should overtake him without any trouble. It would take time, that's all, and both men should have reasonable full tanks.

It just wasn't fair . . .

Doolittle had gotten a visual fix on Talby, but just barely. At first he'd had to use his suit tracker to keep the astronomer in sight, and even now Talby was still just a distant speck against the sky . . . a moving star. Doolittle changed his angle of approach from straight line to curve, so he'd come up behind the astronomer. It would be easier that way than grabbing him and trying to turn them both back toward the ship with the clumsy jet pack.

This way all he'd have to do would be start back toward the ship first, and pick up the tumbling Talby on the way, without any compensation for turns and such. It wouldn't do to waste pack fuel, not at this distance From the
Dark Star
. Idly he wondered what the astronomer had been doing in the lock, suited up, in the first place.

Talby was moving at a constant pace away from the ship. Doolittle discovered that they were already far enough away to make taking an instrument fix on the vessel a necessity. Not much point in catching up to Talby and then finding he couldn't locate the way back.

He pressed a dual control on his right arm. Short puffs of white vapor, like milkweed seeds scattering on a spring day, escaped from the nozzles at his back. Leveling off at the bottom of his planned curve, he started up again.

"Talby, Talby . . . this is Doolittle. I'm coming up after you. Can you read me? I can't see you yet."

Talby, who was spinning, twisting, falling head-over-heels with no way of arresting his tumble, could only scream, "Help, Doolittle, help me!"

The same cry echoed through the bridge, over the speakers now set to Talby's as well as Doolittle's mike frequency.

"Can you beat that, crying for help like that?" Boiler observed smugly. "I always knew that guy was weird."

"Yeah," agreed Pinback. The two men looked at each other in sudden mutual understanding, united opinion-wise for the first time in their similar distrust of the astronomer,

"Sitting up there in his dome," Pinback continued with relish, "never coming down to eat with us or join us in the rec room. Antisocial, that's what he is. And now the idiot's gone and let himself get kicked away from the ship without a jet pack. Serves him right," he concluded, blatantly ignoring the realities of the situation.

He shook his head sadly, reflecting on the inadequacies of others.

"Umm," grunted Boiler, confused by this sudden alliance with Pinback. He didn't like it. It wasn't natural. Turning back to his console, he made an effort to ignore the other,

"Better get on that disarming job. It's been long enough, I think."

"What? Oh, good idea," agreed Pinback, now feeling positively effusive toward the corporal. He flicked his headset again, checked to make sure the proper channel was still open.

"All right, bomb," he began confidently, at the same time aware how emotionally drained he was, "prepare to receive new orders"

The voice of the bomb, when it finally answered, was sharp. "You are false data." Pinback sat up a little straighter in his seat.

"What? Say that again, bomb?"

"You are false data. Therefore I shall ignore you. I am thinking."

Pinback looked over at Boiler, found the corporal staring back at him uncertainly. Boiler gave a little negative jerk of his head to indicate that he didn't understand what the hell was going on here and would Pinback please find out?

"Uh, hello, bomb?" Pinback tried again.

"False data can only act as a distraction. Therefore I refuse to perceive you. I have decided that in the absence of clearly defined, accurate perceptions of the real universe, which may or not exist according to the argument set forth by Lieutenant Doolittle, who may or may not exist, I must in the final analysis make my own decisions about things—since I
do
exist."

"Hey . . ." Pinback whispered, staring up at the screen overhead, at the neat row of zeroes, "bombs . . .?"

"The only thing that exists is myself," the machine rolled on. "I have actual proof only of the existence of me. All else is extraneous and perhaps hallucinatory."

"Hey, Boiler," Pinback said, still watching the zeros, still whispering, "we've got a high bomb."

"D
OOLITTLE, HELP ME
!"

"Calm down," Doolittle shouted into his mike, "I've got you in sight." The spinning astronomer had at last come into view.

He ordered another burst from the jet pack. He wasn't getting close as fast as he would have liked, but he would reach Talby in plenty of time to get them back to the ship. Naturally he would. Talby just had a long head start on him, that was all.

"Relax, Talby . . . I'm coming."

Pinback looked at Boiler. "What should I do? How do we get it down?"

"You're the talker—do something; tell it something . . . anything!"

Pinback clicked his fingers, spoke hesitantly. "Uh, snap out of it, bomb."

"In the Beginning," the bomb intoned, "there was Darkness, and the Darkness was without form and void."

Boiler slowly removed his headset, staring at the zeros. He didn't speak.

"Ah, hello, bomb?" whispered Pinback.

"What the devil is it talking about?" Boiler muttered.

Pinback shook his head uncertainly. "I don't know, man . . . I don't know."

"And in addition to the Darkness," the bomb went on inexorably, "there was also Me. And I moved upon the face of the Darkness. I saw that I was alone, and this was not good. And I determined to change this."

Pinback removed his headset, as had Boiler, and raised his eyes to the zeros as his mind raced ahead, ahead to the inevitable.

"Oh my God," he whined. And the bomb said:

"
Let There Be Light!
"

Fortunately, Doolittle had his back to the sudden, incredibly intense flare of light that erupted behind him. It still was brilliant enough to blind him.

The shock wave from the explosion, spitting displaced air and molecules in all directions, sent him tumbling and twirling crazily, turned the universe into a kaleidoscope of screaming colors and dizzying forms. He howled into the helmet.

The echo of his shriek came back to him. No, no . . . not an echo. It was Talby, somewhere, screaming also. Then the scream faded out and only strange, grumbling noises sounded over his suit speaker.

He was still tumbling, but his sight was coming back. He blinked the chromatic dots from his eyes and managed to get control of himself again. A couple of touches on the jet pack controls and he straightened himself out, faced the universe on an even keel.

"Doolittle," came an unsteady flutter in his helmet, "Doolittle . . . where are you?" It was Talby. It had to be Talby. He found himself still tumbling slightly but didn't try to correct it yet.

"Here I am," he replied, part of him still not functioning, unaware of the incongruity of his words, "and I'm spinning."

Irregular shapes began to come into view, likewise tumbling about the universe. Bits and pieces of plastic and metal and ceramic. Bits and pieces of their ship, the
Dark Star
. Maybe bits and pieces of his friends Boiler and Pinback, too—but he didn't care to think about that.

It was unlikely, though. Of all the components comprising the
Dark Star
, surely the weakest was human flesh.

Better to concentrate on finding Talby. He turned and twisted within the suit, but he couldn't spot the colorful form of the astronomer. He wasn't in the section of sky where he'd been before.

Of course, Doolittle reminded himself, he was no longer in the section of sky
he'd
been in before. The destruction of the
Dark Star
had rearranged this little corner of the galaxy.

"I can't see you anymore, Talby. Can you locate yourself? Can you see me?"

"No," came a voice so near it startled him. "I'm moving away from the planet, I think. You?"

"I think I'm drifting toward it," Doolittle told him after a quick study of his motion relative to the crimson globe below.

"What happened, Doolittle?" Now a faint crackle began to creep into Talby's words. They must be moving apart very fast.

He was surprised at how calmly he replied, how easily the words came. "The bomb must have gone off inside the ship after all."

"What? You say the ship blew up?"

But Doolittle didn't repeat himself. He looked down and to his right. The ship should have been there. It wasn't. It wasn't anyplace, anymore.

"Funny," he mused, talking out loud. "I thought I had the damned thing convinced, I wonder what went wrong."

"Doolittle!"

He blinked. "Yes, Talby, the ship blew up. The last bomb detonated inside."

"Boiler and Pinback?"

"They were aboard when it went, Talby. They're dead. They're dead and the ship is dead."

There was a considerable pause before the astronomer replied quietly, "Then . . . we're dead, too."

"Yes." He had a thought. "Maybe we can keep each other company. Keep talking, at least." He tried the controls on his jetpack. Nothing happened.

"Hey, my jet pack's busted. Oh, man . . . when your luck runs out . . ."

Another large piece of debris came tumbling slowly toward him, spinning only slightly. Assuming it was just another bit of torn hull, he barely spared it an idle glance. Then he stared as it came closer and he recognized it.

It was moving past him and slightly above, out toward deep space. An oblong shape with a naked man frozen in the center of it. Frozen in chemical ice which the cold of deep space would keep from thawing.

"Hey, it looks like the skipper," he blurted.

"What's that?" came Talby's query.

"The skipper. He made it out of the ship in one piece. Commander Powell made it."

The block went sailing by and Doolittle thought he heard—it was imagination, of course—an incredibly faint, puzzled whisper as it shrank into the engulfing blackness.

"Men . . . men . . . what happened, men?"

Imagination. Unless the near-dead commander had developed unsuspected abilities in his state of chill suspension. He followed the nearly transparent block until it vanished completely into the starfield.

What might some exploring alien intelligence make of the skipper? For he would stay frozen, whole, until plunging into a sun or coming within the gravity field of a planet.

"Yeah, the skipper always was lucky."

Now that didn't make too much sense . . . but then, he wasn't feeling terribly rational right now. He pondered his options.

He could wait until his air supply went out. It would go quickly, in a puff, and he would choke, drowning in vacuum. Or if he adjusted it a little, measuring out the last drams precisely, he could slip into a gentle, painless sleep from which he'd never wake.

The first course was decidedly unappealing, but surprisingly, the easier way didn't attract him much, either. There was something lacking—a certain nobility of passing which Doolittle suddenly felt he, as a member of the
Dark Star
complement, deserved.

Don't rush into something, Doolittle, a little voice told him. After all, when the only thing left to do in life is decide how to die, it's worth some serious consideration, it's worth doing right.

But the only other choice he could think of was to crack the seal on his suit and let in the airless ultracold of space. That would be quicker than letting his air supply run out, but probably nearly as painful.

But if he could get his helmet off, he might have a few seconds of consciousness. A few seconds exposed to the elemental space no men experience. It would be a final accomplishment—and thrill.

He'd been a part of it for twenty years now, and it would be nice to go out as a part of it, too, with all the barriers finally gone between them once and for all.

But . . . there was the pain.

As a youngster Doolittle had nearly choked to death on a turkey bone. The memory of that excruciating experience had stayed with him all his life. The thought of choking again and not being able to do anything about it was an impossible emotion to overcome. No, removing his helmet was out. He would probably go out the quiet way, setting his airflow to the minimum and letting himself fall peacefully asleep.

But wait a minute. What about Talby? What was Talby going to do? They really ought to discuss it. They could at least die as a team.

He glanced behind him again. Yes, the explosion had definitely thrown him into a downward curve and he was coming up fast on the world below.

The reddish cast was more pronounced now, like a superintense Mars. He found himself wishing for a little brown and blue and was surprised at the tears forming in his eyes. He'd thought he had those emotions under control. Of all the times for an attack of homesickness . . .